A Tiger Changing It's Stripes
by FaithDaria
Summary: A freshly resurrected Gabriel takes care of a special assignment for his Father, while playing 40 different pranks. Written for gabriel bang


Title: A Tiger Changing Stripes

Rating: R

Warnings: Spoilers up through SPN season 6

Summary: A freshly resurrected Gabriel takes care of a special assignment for his Father, while playing 40 different pranks. SPN/Joan of Arcadia crossover.

Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine.

His Father was supposed to be above petty, mortal concerns like revenge or getting even. God was love, after all, and Gabriel knew he'd been forgiven the instant he'd asked for it.

So why did he have a feeling that Dad was laughing his metaphysical ass off right now?

"We're going to be late," the young woman called over her shoulder as she sprinted down the sidewalk. The heavy messenger bag thumped against her leg with every step. "Hurry up, I can't miss the bus again."

Gabriel sighed and hurried after her. Dad didn't believe in revenge, but he did believe in justice. This was starting to feel uncomfortably like exactly what he deserved.

XXXX

The day Father had saddled (gifted, he reminded himself, gifted) Gabriel with the task of watching over Joan stood out as one of the worst and best days of his very, very long existence.

He remembered the moment he died at Lucifer's hand, though he managed to shove it down and away most of the time.

His brother drove the weapon into Gabriel's heart, and the archangel felt real, physical pain for the first time in his life. He stared up into Lucifer's face, his real one and not the flesh mask he was wearing, catching a glimpse of sorrow mingled with determination, before everything flared white-hot and then faded out to black and cold.

It was warm when he came back to himself, the surface beneath him soft and inviting. Gabriel was at peace.

Which meant he was back home. Surprising, since he thought he'd be dead, and he hadn't expected to be welcomed back with open arms.

There was a chuckle, gentle and familiar. "It's not that easy, dear one."

_Father_. Gabriel bolted up from a bed that wasn't really a bed and looked at the being standing nearby. "Where have you been?"

"You know the answer to that, Gabriel. I was among my children on Earth." The voice was unruffled and patient. "I had seeds to plant."

"Do you know what Zachariah and Michael have been doing while you were gone?" Gabriel was suddenly angry with his Father, angrier than he'd ever been. "They almost ruined everything."

"I know, Gabriel. And I made sure that it won't happen, not the way they want it to." His Father sighed. "Every one of you is responsible for his own actions. What about yours?" Father's tone was sad and disappointed, pretty much the template for every parent who's child had done something they disapproved of.

For the first time in a long time, Gabriel felt the queasy, acrid sensation of guilt. He'd been masquerading as Loki since just after the crucifixion, and Loki had been worshipped. Okay, it was more along the lines of "pay tribute to Loki in the hopes that he doesn't notice you" than anything else, but Gabriel had set himself up to receive glory that rightly belonged to his Father. It didn't matter that the last few hundred years had pretty much eliminated that worship. He had pretended to be God, or at least a god, and that came perilously close to Lucifer's sin.

He didn't regret running away from his brothers, and if he had to do it all over again Gabriel would still choose to leave rather than fight. The things he had done after, however . . .damn it, his Father had given only one real instruction and that had been to protect and love the humans. Even the jackasses.

"It's all right, Gabriel." The metaphorical construct beneath him dipped as the warmth of his Father surrounded him. "You're forgiven. And I have a special task for you."

This, of course, lead to Gabriel's current ordeal (special privilege, damn it!). Dad wanted her to have a companion, someone who could be bodyguard and friend and guide while she (probably unwittingly) prepared for her own future job. Gabriel didn't know precisely what that job was, of course. No one but Father knew the destiny of His special kids. Sometimes it was a seemingly ordinary life that had major repercussions a generation or two later, and sometimes it was something that was destined for the history books.

Joan's was going to be spectacular. This one did things that would get her noticed in a few years as long as Gabriel did his job and kept her alive, which meant he better hurry and catch up with her. He'd have a hard time explaining it to a far too perceptive girl when he beat her to campus.

She was waiting at the bus stop when he got there, throwing in a couple of wheezes for effect. The Gabriel Joan knew was a reedy intellectual who reminded her of her brother. Father didn't want her to catch on that she was being protected, so he was once again undercover, grace tightly tucked away where it couldn't be seen. "Are we done with the race?" he coughed out, and she looked instantly sorry and a touch guilty.

"Yeah. I just wanted to make sure we didn't miss the bus. If I'm late for Dr. Rivers' class again he'll probably make me take the class over."

He wouldn't, actually. Joan was unaware that she was one of the man's favorite students because of the way she got into the class discussions. They argued frequently, of course, but that only endeared her to him a little more. If there was one thing a law professor could appreciate, it was a student who could argue coherently.

They parted ways at the lecture hall; it would have been too obvious if Joan's new friend was in all her classes. He lingered unseen in the back of the room instead, making sure that nothing came in to the class that intended to harm her. With the exception of that twit Ryan Hunter a few years ago, thankfully handled before he came onto the scene, nothing supernatural seemed to know she was around. That could all change in an instant, though, and he intended to be ready if and when it did. Joan wouldn't go unnoticed forever. Gabriel needed to be ready for the eventual invasion of threats.

They met up in the library after Joan's class, along with a handful of others who slowly drifted away after an hour or so. Gabriel was ostensibly working on a paper for the class he was supposedly taking, but since he had a replica sitting in the class and could write a paper with the snap of his fingers he was spending the time in more interesting pursuits. There was a couple making out in the study carrel two rows down, doing their best to go unheard and failing miserably. Gabriel amused himself passing by and pausing in various guises, starting with a janitor and working up to the girl's advisor. They finally got some sort of clue before he could escalate into a family member.

He wandered back to the study table, feeling pleased with himself, and settled back down at the table with Joan. "You're never going to finish that paper if you keep heading off like that," Joan said, looking up from a reference journal.

"I'll get it done," Gabriel said dismissively. He picked up a notebook and one of the books and made a show of scribbling down a few things, though his attention remained elsewhere. His fictitious classes and the pursuit of an unnecessary law degree were the best cover to remain close to his charge, but they bored him on a level he'd rarely experienced. It was far more entertaining to trick the people around him, though Father had made him promise to dial back a little.

Joan was similarly jotting down notes, but she was just as distracted as he was. She kept glancing up and over to the right, looking over his shoulder at something or someone behind him. He finally decided to call her on it. "How's your paper going?"

"Hmm?" She yanked her gaze back to the table. There was a slight flush to her cheeks when she met his eyes, and Gabriel immediately turned around and looked.

They weren't hard to see, even if he limited himself to mortal vision. Those two managed to stand out no matter where they went. Gabriel caught himself gritting his teeth when he caught sight of Sam Winchester. Something was wrong there. The younger Winchester shouldn't be out walking the earth.

He wasn't surprised that they'd caught her eye, either. Sam was exactly her type and was most likely the reason for the earlier blushing. There was something beyond the aesthetics of the Winchester brothers, however, something that likely pinged on the girl's internal radar. Part of it was their status as the vessels of archangels, which tended to create some sort of come-hither aura that his own vessel had made a great deal of use in, two thousand years ago. Another was simply how steeped the two of them were in the supernatural. Joan had experienced enough strangeness in her lifetime to make her more in tune with those types of things. But the bulk of it probably had little to do with either of those things, and everything to do with Joan's damned compassion. Those two had literally been through Hell and Joan wanted to help them.

Dean straightened up from speaking with Amanda at the reception desk (a voice like Eartha Kitt, and he had been planning on chasing that one down as soon as Joan was safely tucked away for the night) and turned in their direction.

Damn it.

There was no doubt in his mind that the hunter was here for either him or Joan, and since he'd taken great pains to stay off the radar and even dropped about 15 years from his vessel's appearance, Gabriel was fairly sure they weren't out hunting archangels.

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

The Winchesters had somehow managed to avert the apocalypse without killing either of his brothers, for which Gabriel was very thankful. That didn't mean he wanted either one of them around his charge. And seriously, how the hell had they even caught wind of her? It wasn't like Joan took out an ad or something. The only person she'd ever actually told was her old boyfriend, and that douche had thought she'd been hallucinating.

Unfortunately, any attempt to divert those two would likely result in them digging deeper and possibly revealing both of their identities. Since Gabriel was currently trying to stay beneath the radar, whatever plan he developed to distract them was, sadly, going to lack that special flair that screamed 'Loki was here.'

Even harder than turning away Sam and Dean's attention would be keeping Joan away from them. Joan usually had good instincts when it came to people, but even if she could tell something was wrong with Sam (and something was definitely wrong, he could feel it), that would only make her more determined to fix it. Gabriel knew Sam's track record when it came to women, and would prefer to keep the younger Winchester far away from his charge, but if he broke out the usual methods the dimwits might actually put a few things together and uncover his identity again. The archangel had experienced that only once in the two thousand years or so that he'd been in his own personal version of WitSec. Once was more than enough, thank you.

Joan made a muffled sort of squeak when she realized that those two were coming her way and tried to look like she was still engrossed in the stack of reference books at her side. It was a mostly futile effort that would normally have made Gabriel chuckle, but right now it failed to amuse him.

It was somehow even less funny when they got closer and Gabriel could tell exactly what was wrong with Sam Winchester. The howl of a completely empty vessel was almost overwhelming. It was a minor miracle that the man wasn't continuously surrounded by things looking for a host, since the only thing keeping him from being possessed was a thin layer of ink under the skin that could be easily broken with a knife.

Joan had hidden further behind the book in her hand as they approached until only the bright red tips of her ears were showing. She reluctantly lowered it when Dean cleared his throat, revealing similarly flushed cheeks.

"Joan Girardi?" She nodded, still strangely mute, and Dean gave her a quick, almost reassuring smile. "I'm Agent Campbell. This is Agent Raimi. We have a few questions we'd like to ask you, if you have a moment?"

"Shouldn't you be on the set of Evil Dead 4 or something?" Gabriel muttered. The stringless puppet standing there with his bland expression grated on his nerves. He wanted to drop it in a pit of alligators or shove it off a cliff, but mostly he wanted it to be away from him. Sam Winchester had been irritating and a little too bleeding-heart for his taste, but he'd at least been real.

Joan kicked him under the table. She glared some warning at him, though he doubted he'd be able to interpret it if he wasn't capable of reading her mind, and turned her attention back to the Winchesters. "It's not a problem. Have a seat."

Sam started to say something, probably an order for Gabriel to leave, but Dean nudged him with one elbow and sat down next to Joan. His brother sat down next to Gabriel, much to both of their displeasure. "What exactly are you investigating?" the archangel asked, feeling a little spiteful. He was ready and willing to create the subject of their scrutiny if it would get the two of them away from here. Dean wasn't that bad, really, but he was a trouble magnet and every second that he was near Joan was probably putting her in danger. The Sam-shaped golem, on the other hand, he just wanted gone.

"We're investigating the murder of Lucy Bennett," Sam said.

Gabriel wished them luck with that one. Lucy Bennett had been killed by a regular grade human, albeit a nasty specimen of one. The cops didn't have any leads, and even if they managed to connect the dots and place the blame where it belonged they were never going to find Ryan Beck. Gabriel had made sure of that. The asshole had planned on Joan becoming his next plaything.

Whatever weird female quirk had possessed Joan when she first laid eyes on the Winchester brothers, it was gone now. She had been friends with Lucy and when Sam said her name Gabriel felt the surge of anger and sorrow that bubbled up. Her fist clenched momentarily before she forcibly relaxed it. Gabriel saw the warrior that she was going to be in that moment. "What about it?"

"Nothing specific," Dean said, shooting his pseudo-brother a glance. "We just have a few questions. I understand you were friends with Miss Bennett?"

Joan nodded. "Yeah, we met in undergrad at University of Maryland."

"Do you know if she was seeing anyone new?"

"She wasn't," Joan said. "Lucy broke up with her girlfriend last semester. She said she was taking a year off from dating."

"Okay." Dean took this apparent surprise and rolled with it. "Was there anyone new in her life at all? New roommate, study partner, co-worker?"

"She always had new co-workers. High turnover rate at the coffee shop because they always think it's going to be a piece of cake and then quit when it turns out to be actual work." Joan was quiet for a second, reflecting, and then spoke again. "There was some new guy in her Ethics study group that was kind of pushy. I think his name was Bryan or Ryan or something. He hasn't been around in a while."

Gabriel wasn't aware that Joan had been paying that much attention, but he approved of it. "Hey, yeah, I remember that guy. I haven't seen him lately, either," he added, partly to cement her observation and partly to remind them all that he was here.

Dean made a note of it, making Gabriel wonder if the hunter would be following up on the slim lead. "She had just moved into a new apartment, correct?"

"When she broke up with Jennifer," Joan agreed, wrinkling her nose. "It was kind of a dump, but Lucy wanted some space to herself."

"Anything strange about the place? Cold drafts, flickering lights, that sort of thing?"

She shrugged. "The usual for a building that old. The owners redid the wiring a few years ago so that they could rent to students without worrying about computers setting the place on fire." Some emotion flickered behind that open-book face. "What would that have to do with Lucy's murder?"

"We're investigating several leads," Dean said smoothly. Gabriel rolled his eyes as the man stood up in unison with the soulless shell. He handed over a business card and said, "We'll be in touch."

"That was weird," Gabriel said once they were gone.

"Really weird," Joan admitted. She was watching them go with another of those opaque looks, and Gabriel wondered what her most recent discussion with Father had been.

"So what was up with all the blushing?" Gabriel asked. He'd learned pretty early on that Joan preferred bluntness to tact.

"Nothing." The girl picked up the book she'd been hiding behind earlier. "None of your beeswax."

"Come on, spill." He nudged her with one foot while inventing a haunting for the Winchesters to investigate and take care of. Hopefully once they were done with that business they'd move on.

She shifted in her seat and pulled the book closer, avoiding his eyes. "I'm not listening to you," she informed him.

"You know you're going to tell me anyway." Gabriel delivered another glancing blow to her shin. "Is it 'cause you think they're hot?"

The telltale red crept up her neck and lit up her ears. "I'm not telling you."

"Someone's got a crush," Gabriel sang out. "Which one?"

Her head dropped down onto the table. "The tall one," she said. "I've saw him at the coffee shop yesterday. He bought me a latte. And I don't have a crush on him. He's really cute, and he was kind of nice yesterday, but I think there's something a little wrong with him."

Gabriel wasn't surprised that she'd picked up on Sam's appalling lack of a soul, and since he'd already sent the Winchesters on a wild goose chase he was feeling a little magnanimous. "Speaking of coffee, I could use some. You up for it?"

Her head lifted from its not-that-comfortable resting place on the Federal Criminal Code and Rules and she smiled. "Yes! Something with lots of sugar."

"It's like you can read my mind."

xxx

Joan wanted to head back to the library after her mocha break, but Gabriel managed to talk her into heading back to her dorm room for the night. He had plans for the evening that differed from his original ones with Amanda, and with the Winchesters in town trouble was sure to follow.

The trail that would lead to Sam and Dean's vengeful spirit had already been at least partly laid with a few stray thoughts earlier, but he wanted to put a few personal touches on it that would be much more fun in person.

The building that Lucy had been living in was old enough to already have a few ghost stories, and thankfully they were nebulous enough that it only took one or two additions to the public record and a "new" grave to make it appear to be a bonafide haunting. Gabriel added a little twist to it in the form of a previous owner losing his wife to another woman and then let it go, knowing it would take on a life of its own with no more effort on his part.

With that done, Gabriel checked in with a few contacts, trying to find out what the Winchesters had been up to in the past year and a half. A demon was responsible for Sam's resurrection, which wasn't much of a surprise. Crowley must have called in a few favors to have the body hold together so well without a soul powering it, but that still would have been easier than prying Sam's soul out of the cage. Gabriel could probably have done it, given time and motivation, but it would have taken an incredible amount of skill and patience to put the soul back together afterwards. Demons rarely had much of either. The Muppet had been working with what was left of the Campbells for most of that time.

Dean was harder to nail down. He'd somehow fallen completely off the radar for that first year, not a single blip alerting any of Gabriel's informants of his presence. He could always check in with Heaven, of course - Castiel was tied to Dean and would know anything there was to know about his whereabouts and actions – but Gabriel hesitated to do so. His last meeting up with that particular younger brother hadn't gone well and now that the whole mess was over they should probably kiss and make up, but that would take time that Gabriel wasn't willing to spare at the moment.

The Winchester brothers had reappeared together about six months ago. Gabriel had his own personal theories about their reported activities since then, especially relating to Crowley and the carrot of Sam's soul the demon was no doubt dangling over Dean's head, but right now it wasn't his problem. Get the Winchesters the hell away from Joan, then address Heaven's problems.

Intel-gathering complete for the moment, Gabriel checked in on Joan (working on her paper and messaging her friend Grace, safe and sound with the door locked), made sure the Winchesters were safely out of the way for the night, flexed his fingers and started a new project. Ryan Beck was at least partially responsible for the Winchesters and their infuriating presence. Time to make his life as a Roman slave a little more uncomfortable.

xxx

Gabriel was feeling a little more relaxed the next morning, ready to tackle the immediate problem of the Winchesters and then see about helping out back home. Crowley making a play for purgatory was a problem that someone other than him should be aware of. He was ready and waiting with coffee when Joan met him at the bus stop. OK, he made the coffee arrive with a snap of his fingers, but it was the thought that counts.

Amazing how chipper a little well-applied righteous anger could make an angel.

Joan was a little subdued when she took the cup. "Thanks," she muttered. She clutched it with both hands and brought it close to her face, inhaling the fragrance.

"Works better if you drink it," Gabriel said. "Long night?"

"That paper is kicking my butt." She took a long drink, closed her eyes and sighed happily. "And a friend of mine dropped by last night."

Gabriel's metaphorical heart skipped a beat on reflex before settling back down. Sam Winchester had been hustling pool across town at the kind of bar Joan wouldn't set foot in without a divine command. "Anyone I know?"

She shook her head. "A friend of mine from home," she said. "He always has a lot to say when he shows up."

Gabriel went back to his former relaxed state, reading between the lines and determining that Father had been Joan's visitor last night. That was one relationship he didn't need to concern himself with when it came to Joan, somewhat ironically considering it was the reason he was here in the first place. "Drink up. You need to be in Professor Rivers' class in half an hour and you know what he does to zombies."

She remained quiet for most of the day, even in the classes that he snuck into, which made Gabriel wonder what Father had asked of her. It was obviously something she wasn't going to enjoy, but that was typically Father. With a little luck, it would keep her occupied until Dean and Sam had moved on. The Winchesters were poking around in his little urban legend now. Hopefully they'd do a little salt and burn and move on soon. Sam's presence, or rather lack of one, was incredibly distracting right now. It was startling how much energy and attention his current role of plucky sidekick and best friend took when he really got into it.

"Gabriel?"

He turned to her, abandoning his current amusement of rearranging all the books in the medical reference section. That would drive those med students _insane_. Doctors needed to be taken down a peg or two, even little baby ones. "Yeah? Something wrong, Joan?"

Joan shook her head. "No. I just wanted to ask you something." She looked nervous and uncharacteristically uncertain, which was an odd look for one of Father's special children, but they all had their flaws. It was what made them perfect for the job they were to do.

"And?"

"Do you think I'll make a good lawyer?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, I really enjoyed mock trial when I was in high school, and debate was kind of interesting, and I like my classes and all, but will I be good at it?"

"Where did this come from?" It was a legitimate question. Joan wasn't a girl given to second-guessing herself. It was a fairly common trait amongst Father's special kids.

"Something my friend said last night."

"Which was?" He was treading on dangerous ground here. Father's meetings with Joan were private things, very much on the list of things that were None Of His Business.

"That sometimes it takes people a long time to figure out what they're meant to do."

"How did you turn that into this little panic attack?"

She gave him a tired smile. "You'd have to know him."

Gabriel sighed. He really didn't have time for existential quandaries right now. "Do you like doing it? The research, being in court, all of it?"

"Yes," she returned immediately. "I love it. It's like I'm uncovering the truth and tacking it up on a billboard for everyone to see."

"And are you good at finding the truth like that?"

There was a little more hesitation, but she finally nodded. "I think I am."

"There you go. If you're good at that and you like doing it, you'll be a decent lawyer."

"But what if I'm not supposed to be a lawyer?"

"Then something will happen so that you aren't a lawyer," Gabriel returned, a headache developing. He hadn't signed up for 'meaning of life' discussions. Mary was never this irritating. Jehanne d'Arc had been, but he hadn't needed to spend this kind of time with her. "Just keep doing what you've been doing, Joan. It'll all work out."

xxx

Joan remained distracted for the next day or two despite Gabriel's reassurances, though a major paper and exams in two separate classes were at least partially responsible for the current attitude. The Winchesters were following the breadcrumbs of his invented case without any serious deviation from the path. This meant that Gabriel had far too much free time on his hands, always a dangerous thing for a being who didn't sleep and enjoyed playing pranks on people.

It wasn't Gabriel's place to punish people without instruction from Father. All judgment belonged ultimately to God, after all. He'd instead started thinking of what he did as more . . .uncovering and correction than delivering a sentence. The things Gabriel did revealed the sins and hypocrisy of the high and mighty, and if a professor trading grades for sexual favors was caught with his pants down, sometimes literally, Father indulged him. It was a fine line to walk, but Gabriel had nothing but time to practice.

Right now his charge was safely tucked away in her room, surrounded by books and plowing through that night's assigned reading with all the determination he'd come to expect from the girl. This left him free to pursue on of his side projects that had been quietly simmering on the back burner since the Winchesters showed up.

He'd gone for the slow burn with this guy, starting with relatively small annoyances (Gabriel's first volley had been changing the prescription in the man's glasses) and building steadily. Before Dean and his animatronic brother had nudged into first priority the local city council offices had been overrun with rodents – feral hamsters, to be specific. The head of the city council had then gone home to find that all the pipes in his house had frozen and burst during the day, somewhat remarkable when you consider that it was fifty-three degrees and sunny that particular afternoon.

Gabriel was in the process of stealing the man's prized Jaguar and leaving it in the Philippines when he felt a tingle of alarm spread up his spine. He abandoned the car on a beach without the finishing touches of stealing the radio and the tires and appeared just outside of Joan's room.

Father had tied Gabriel to Joan, tightly enough that the archangel would remain connected to her as long as she lived. What she felt and thought would always echo back to Gabriel, even if he wasn't near, and right now she was feeling fear with a slight undercurrent of anger.

The room was empty, so Gabriel slipped through the strands of reality and reappeared inside. It was undisturbed, looking for all the world like Joan was simply in the bathroom or just down the hall doing laundry. Maybe on a coffee run, giving the empties in the garbage can. There was a book open on her desk, four more stacked underneath it, computer on and running, and a notebook and pen placed next to the computer.

The problem was that it was too clean. Gabriel couldn't sense the remnants of anyone that shouldn't have been there. He couldn't sense _anyone_, period, including the traces of Joan that had been bleeding into the walls since she'd moved in. It was like the place had been wiped clean, psychically speaking, which meant that whoever had taken Joan against her will was interested in covering their tracks.

The archangel took one last look around the room, making sure that whatever had taken Joan hadn't left something plugged in that would set the place on fire. If he got her back and all her classwork was gone, she would be _pissed_.

xxx

It was entrance worthy of an archangel, some tiny part of Gabriel's mind snarked as he stormed into the dingy motel room. It had been a long time since he'd really stretched out his wings, so to speak. In the past two thousand years or so, his acts as an archangel could be counted on one hand. It felt good to swing the door open with his mind, storm past Dean Winchester, and grab his soulless brother by the neck with one hand. "What did you two dickwads do?" he snarled.

"Hey," Dean protested, gun out in a heartbeat. "Put my brother down."

Gabriel rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers on his free hand. The weapon turned into a water pistol, which he figured Joan would have laughed at. "Grown-ups are talking, Dean."

The automaton pinned against the wall gasped out half of a strangled name before Gabriel turned his attention back to him. "She'd never even been on the radar until you two chuckleheads showed up and started asking questions, and now she's gone. Who did you talk to and what did you say?"

"Gabriel?"

He let the face of his vessel slip back to what the two of them knew. It was easier to deal with them that way. The younger version seemed to belong to Joan, somehow. "That's my name. Try to keep up, moron."

"Are you talking about that Joan chick?"

"That's the one." Gabriel tightened his grip on Sam's throat. "Let's try this one more time. Who did you talk to?"

"About what?" Dean asked, that perpetually angry expression deepening. "We haven't fucking done anything except ask some chick about something we thought might be an angry spirit. And what the hell are you doing here anyway? You're supposed to be dead."

"Yeah, well, Daddy gave me one bonus pass for sticking up for you chuckleheads." He dropped Sam, mostly because it was inconvenient to continue holding him. "Castiel got two and a free upgrade." Sam got up, moving with the type of caution that Gabriel approved of. "Tell you what, Sammy, you just stay over there for now." He snapped his fingers and a hard-backed chair appeared. Gabriel knew that it was uncomfortable and an inch or so too short for Sam to sit in with any ease, and that was perfect. "You know his soul isn't in there, right? It's probably still locked in the cage with my idiot brothers."

Dean sighed. "Yeah. I knew something was wrong from the beginning, but I couldn't get anyone to check until a few weeks ago."

"I'm right here, y'know. You can ask me."

"No you're not," Gabriel said immediately. "You only look and think like Sam. You're a wind-up tinkertoy with delusions of grandeur and a limited shelf-life, buddy."

"Wait, what do you mean 'limited shelf-life'?"

"I mean you've probably only got six months or so before that shell starts to break down without a soul to keep it running." Gabriel shook his head. "Humans aren't designed to keep going without some energy powering them, and while this might be a fascinating conversation for you two, it's not my problem. Did you mention Joan to one of those demons that keep hanging around looking for a piece of action?"

"No," Dean said, sitting down on the foot of the bed. "Only person we've talked to about anything on this case is Bobby, and I never mentioned the witnesses I'd talked to."

"Shit." Gabriel slumped down, only barely remembering to manifest his own chair before dropping down. Unlike Sam's, this one was soft and plush. "What about Castiel? Have you talked to him since you got into town?" It was a long shot, but at least he knew how the other angels operated. If she'd been taken by some vanilla mortal Gabriel would drop-kick the asshole into a pocket reality that made Hell look like a sauna.

"The day we caught wind of the case, but we were in Indiana at the time." Dean's face twisted a little. "You know anything about the stuff that went missing from Heaven's weapon locker?"

"What went missing?"

"They found Moses' staff not too long ago. Not sure what else is missing. Apparently this douchebag named Balthazar jumped ship with a bunch of them when the Apocalypse didn't happen. Like you, only with less class."

"And why was Castiel looking for them?"

"He's trying to get to them before Raphael."

"That jackass."

Dean snorted out a laugh. "You don't know the half of it. Man, you got shit luck when it comes to brothers."

"What's he trying to do now?"

"He's trying to get it all started again. Wants to set both Michael and Lucifer free so they can finally fight the big battle." Sam, who had been suspiciously quiet since Gabriel had spilled the beans about his imminent death, finally spoke up. "Is it true?"

Gabriel clenched one fist, resisting the temptation to snap his fingers and turn Sam into a turtle. With the way his luck was running today, he'd probably end up with something overlarge and carnivorous. "Yes, it's true. The human body needs the energy provided by something resembling a soul, though a demon can keep one running for a little while and an angel's grace can keep it going pretty much forever. You don't have any of those things. And I'll talk about it more once we've found Joan. Now shut up and let me think." Something about the idea of Raphael looking for weapons had struck him. He wondered idly if anyone would ever figure out where he'd hidden the Ark of the Covenant.

Someday some uptight scholar was going to realize that it had been boxed up in storage in Grant's tomb for the past one hundred or so years and the uproar would be glorious to watch. Gabriel was planning on bringing popcorn.

"Why would someone want to take Joan?" Dean was studying him from his seated position, eyes focused more intently than Gabriel was entirely comfortable with. He knew Dean was far more intelligent than he let on, but the Hunter had a bad habit of using what he learned as blackmail.

"You have to admit, she's pretty hot," Gabriel deflected. "And she hangs out with me. That might have made her look like good ransom material."

"Which shows she's pretty desperate for a friend," Dean said. "But you could make a hundred Playboy bunnies without any trouble, so something else is going on here."

The archangel bit back the urge to curse. He couldn't give anything away. Especially since the concept of Heaven's weapons had just meshed with Joan. He'd forgotten that she could be considered to be such a thing, that along with the dangers she faced from humans and demons he should have been worried that someone would notice the metaphorical rocket launcher he'd been babysitting for the past few months.

Unfortunately, that idea had just occurred to Dean as well. "She's one of your nukes, isn't she?" His eyes widened and he stood up. "She's one of your nukes and now she's missing."

"She's not a fucking missile, Dean," he snapped. "She's better. More versatile."

"And how are your brothers going to use her, huh?"

And that just took the cake. Joan had a connection to God that not even an archangel could match, had probably spent more time with Father than anyone in thousands of years. They were going to take her apart trying to get to the knowledge in her head.

In some ways, it was actually a lucky break for Joan. There were a hundred ways that an archangel could use one of God's special kids. It rarely happened because they were usually marked as strictly off-limits, but Michael or Lucifer would have twisted Joan into whatever they needed and discarded her when they were done.

Raphael had always been far more straightforward. He would take her apart, but Gabriel doubted the idea of using a human had ever occurred to him. Joan would prefer that to being manipulated into a war, hands down.

His goal was to find them both before that happened and deliver an ass-kicking that would make World War II look like an argument between two twelve-year-old girls.

"So which one is she?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes. He'd forgotten how single-minded Dean could be. How infuriatingly, annoyingly single-minded.

He snapped his fingers for coffee, something obnoxiously sweet and teeth-rotting. He'd developed a taste for it hanging around with college students. "You think Azazael came up with the idea of his special kids?" the archangel said. Might as well tell them. He could always erase their memories if it got awkward. "Demons haven't come up with an original idea since the beginning. He took something that belonged to Heaven and twisted it, just like Lucy."

Sam looked at him a little blankly. "So an angel bled into her mouth when she was a baby?"

Gabriel wrinkled his nose. "Um, ew? No. That was one of the things that old yellow eyes twisted. Ever read the Bible there, brainiac?"

"Yeah," Dean answered, which was a bit of a surprise. "Don't remember this part, though."

"Try Abraham, genius. Or maybe one of the two dozen or so other ones listed. Sometimes Father just picks a person and starts talking to them."

"I'm not following."

Gabriel turned his coffee into something a little stronger. The things he had to put up with sometimes. "She's Joan of Arc, jackass. In training to be a warrior and an emissary of God, which is something you might want to think about next time you think about trying to bang her, Sammy."

"Too much work," Sam said dismissively, which made Gabriel see red for a second before acknowledging that he'd wanted exactly that sort of response. "A girl like that isn't going to settle for getting some and getting gone."

"Try it and I'll make sure you come down with the most hideously deforming STD in existence."

"So how do we get her back from your douchebag brother?" Dean asked, bringing the conversation back to topic before his brother could shoot off another retort that would probably end with Gabriel carrying through on his promise just for the hell of it.

"Call Castiel," Gabriel said. "I've got a feeling that this is going to take care of his little problem with Raphael."

"His problem and not yours?" Dean asked shrewdly.

"I'm strictly on babysitting duty right now," Gabriel told him. "Stopping whatever plan my idiot brother has cooked up is just a nice bonus. I mostly just want him as far away from Joan as I can get him."

"And Heaven can go fuck itself?"

"Heaven is Castiel's concern. He's Michael's new replacement. Keeping Joan alive and on task is mine. This isn't the kind of thing that you can mess with, moron. A shakeup in Heaven is nothing compared to a screwup in the destiny of one of Dad's kids."

"What kind of trouble are we talking about here?"

"Jehanne d'Arc broke a siege that had lasted for months under Michael's orders. She helped turn the tide of the Hundred Years War, and the powers that be were so scared of her that they burned her as a witch. In the wrong hands they can be used to tear down countries." Gabriel grimaced and stood up, making the chair disappear with a thought. "If Michael or Lucifer had gotten their hands on her during their little bitch fight, no one would have liked the results. Think Sodom and Gomorrah only a little more global. So get off your ass and call your buddy Cas, Dean. We need to start planning out how to get her back."

"Okay," Dean said, lifting his hands and backing away. "Don't get all wrath of God on me, here."

"You've never seen the wrath of God," Gabriel told him. "But if we don't get Joan back safe and sound, we'll all get a front row seat to the real thing."

"All right." Dean shifted in his position, lowering his elbow down onto his knees, hands dangling loose as he closed his eyes. "Hey, Cas, it's Dean. We've got a lead on one of Heaven's loose artillery down here and could use the assistance."

Gabriel raised one eyebrow. "That's it? That's how you pray?"

"All I'm really comfortable with," the hunter said, shrugging and opening his eyes. "He usually responds really quickly if he's not in the middle of something."

"I am always occupied," Castiel said, startling the humans in the room with his sudden appearance. "I always respond when I can. Hello, Gabriel."

To most ears that would have sounded carefully neutral. Gabriel, of course, could hear the inherent fury that lay underneath his little brother's calm façade. He grinned. Little brother was growing up.

"Castiel," he drawled.

"I would ask where you have been, but I'm sure that I already know the answer to that. What reason do you have for showing up now?"

That one hurt a little, but Gabriel kept his smile. "I think I should resent that, little brother. _I_ have been on a specific assignment."

"You have been hiding from your responsibilities," Castiel said matter-of-factly.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. It had been such a glimmer of potential, so quickly snuffed out. "Let's take this squabble someplace a little more comfortable." He snapped his fingers and brought all four of them to his favorite coffee shop in a little out-of-the-way dimension. The cinnamon rolls here were as big as your head, made fresh every morning by a young magic-user with a gift for transmogrification.

This particular slice of the multiverse had tied up everything with a hint of magic in layers of red tape and bureaucracy. The local cops in charge of enforcing those laws spent a lot of time at this particular coffee shop, and Gabriel flicked a finger and changed all the sugar in their coffee into salt. Most of them were partially _something_ and Gabriel didn't really like the inherent hypocrisy of it all.

He ordered for all of them at the counter, despite Castiel's stiff-necked disdain when it came to food, and then hustled them off to a little side table to enjoy the spoils. His slab of Bitter Chocolate Death was amazing as always, and he took a moment to relish it while happily ignoring his brother's histronics.

"Eat your Cinnamon Roll, Castiel," he said once the first blush of enjoyment had faded a little. "I've been watching one of Dad's special kids for the past two years. He told me to stay undercover, so I've been behaving."

"I'm not sure Thomas Carter would agree with you."

"That was a special case," Gabriel protested. "Besides, it was funny as hell."

"I do not believe anyone would find being dangled from the roof of the building by a costumed vigilante enjoyable."

"That was kind of the point. Come on, you're not still pissed because I dropped you in Twilight, are you?"

"Edward Cullen was most annoying," the angel growled. "I don't understand why you didn't help us stop Michael if you were still alive."

"Father had it handled. He told me to stick with Joan, so I did what he told me. Trust me, Joan needed someone to watch out for her. You don't mess with God's plan, Castiel. It has a way of happening no matter what you try."

"So why now?"

"We think teenage mutant ninja angel has the girl," Dean said, looking up from the crumbs of his apple tart with a look approaching reverence. "Dude, where are we? I think I want to live next door to this place."

"We're a couple of strands over from your reality," Gabriel said. "The trip is worth it, though. So, here's my plan on how we're getting Joan back from my dick brother."

"They're all pretty much dicks," Dean pointed out, reaching over and stealing a strip of Castiel's cinnamon roll. "Sorry, Cas."

"So's yours," Gabriel returned amiably. "Raphael has Joan. He's going to take her apart so that he can use her to win this little tiff you two have going. I've gotten to like her and I don't want to spend the next few months putting her back together again, so we need to get her out of the way so I can express my displeasure with the moron. With me so far?"

There were nods all around, so Gabriel launched into the next portion of his plan. "I can locate Joan eventually. Father tied us together, and I can use that to work around some things. If Raph stayed on the physical plane, I want you two mooks to get her out. Castiel and I will take care of Raphael."

"I am not sure how much assistance I will be," Castiel said, oddly apologetic. "The last time we met did not go well for me."

"There's a difference between having the power of an archangel and knowing how to use it," Gabriel told him. "If you want, I'll teach you a few tricks on how to kick ass." He meant it as an olive branch of sorts. Of all of them, he'd probably hurt Castiel the worst. Even after Shaggy and Scooby Doo over there had pulled off the rubber mask, they had no reason to expect better treatment from the archangel Gabriel. Castiel, though, did not deserve what other angels had put him through.

"Isn't this a little casual for a rescue planning?" Sam turned from his perusal of the coffee shop patrons. "Shouldn't you be a little more urgent?"

"There are some things that Raphael will have to take care of before he can get started. Dad made sure to protect his special kids from overly involved angels. We have time. Besides, this particular dimension runs on a different time standard than yours. Until we move back, time isn't an issue."

"I'm good," Dean said, finishing off his coffee (he'd kept his black and was therefore amused rather than offended when the splutters began). "What if she's not on Earth anymore?"

"Raphael doesn't have the patience or imagination to move her to another reality. If she's not on our Earth anymore, she's in Heaven and I can find her faster. And at that point Father will probably be doling out some capital punishment. Joan has a destiny that she needs to fulfill before she goes home. If she's still alive, it'll take me a little longer to find her but I'll do it. Questions?"

"Can I get one of whatever you had to go?" Dean asked hopefully. "Actually, your Joan chick would probably like one too. Most women really go for chocolate."

"Not a bad idea," Gabriel admitted. "I'm going to need something to make this whole archangel thing go down a little easier."

"She didn't know?"

"Dad said keep it quiet, so I did. And the only way two can keep a secret is if one of them is dead."

"And on that note," Dean said, standing up from the table. "We're going to need a few supplies to get the girl away from Raphael."

"Holy oil would be useful," Castiel murmured. "I will go to Jerusalem."

"I'll take these two back to this version of Chicago." Gabriel eyed the counter again with an air of melancholy. "After I get one of these for Joan."

xxx

"You've been pretty low-key," Dean said. "We had no idea you were hanging around until you came through the door and threw Sam into the wall."

Gabriel changed the contents of the bottle of beer in Dean's hand to something non-alcoholic. He wanted the guy functional in a few hours. "I promised Dad," he said. "Nothing fatal and nothing that will draw attention. Slipped up a couple of times early on, but I caught 'em before they made it too far."

"Like?" Dean looked interested in the conversation for the first time since Castiel and Sam had left to gather supplies. Some of the things they would need worked better when not altered into existence by an archangel, and if he left right now someone might notice. Gabriel had no doubt that one of Raphael's lackies was following their little brother, and while he could no doubt handle whoever it was he had no intention of announcing his presence just yet.

"This asshole almost hit Joan with his car speeding through a parking lot, so I turned his Corvette into a Pinto while he was still in it, in front of ten of his buddies from the frat house." Gabriel smiled fondly; the look on the guy's face had been priceless. He'd been forced to change memories and paperwork later to keep people from digging too deeply, but it had all been worthwhile just to teach that Jason punk a lesson.

Dean looked a little uncomfortable at the idea, probably because he was picturing the same thing happening to his own car. "Huh. Any others?"

Gabriel quickly passed over one; he really didn't feel like talking about the guy on campus who had been drugging and raping his classmates. The scumbag had been dropped into a prison movie with a rap sheet that named him as a child molester, which Gabriel thought had been a perfect case of just desserts. That one had come within a hairs breadth of turning deadly and Gabriel had realized that he still needed to pull back. That move was Loki all the way, and the river of shit that would pour down if someone noticed was not to be believed. "I reversed all the plastic surgery for some high-maintenance beauty queen," he offered up, which was both true and funny as hell. "She just woke up one morning to find her old nose in place and about one hundred extra pounds on her ass." That one had also been a little too much Loki, but he'd gotten away with it and started to play down his urges a little, trying to find satisfaction in the sneakier tricks.

Dean snorted out a laugh and set his beer down on the scarred table. "That right there? That's up there with the slow-dancing alien," he said.

"I've got a reputation to uphold," Gabriel said, his eyes sparking with mischief. "And sometimes you've got to blow your own horn when no one else will."

There was an odd noise from Dean. "Speaking of that, we ran across a rumor about the horn of truth. Any idea where that is now?"

Gabriel slid him a sidelong glance. "Maybe." He'd misplaced it sometime in the last millennium when he'd gotten the idea to hide out in with the pagans, but a few years ago it had shown up in a museum. He'd crafted a replacement out of some cheap diner silverware and hustled the real one away to someplace a little safer, where he could get to it without interference. "No one else can use it, so it isn't something for anyone to worry about. If any one but me tries to play a little tune to jump-start things, it'll just come out sounding like a cheap trumpet played by a middle-school kid."

Dean chuckled. "Good to know. There's enough of that crap floating around right now as it is."

"If I ever run into the moron who thought it would be a good idea to spread Heaven's weapons out on Earth for a handful of souls that they can't really use, I'm going to dump him into a loop of Survivor. There's a good reason they've been locked away in Heaven. Except for a few things, only the original owner can use them properly."

"So they're pretty much useless but dangerous down here?" Dean gave a bitter-sounding laugh. "Pretty much par for the course, then. Any chance one of them can help me get Sam's soul out of hock?"

"No," Gabriel said immediately. "Nothing in Heaven's broom closet can get that cage open, Dean. After all the trouble getting Lucifer down there in the first place, Michael made sure of it."

"Yeah, that figures."

The man looked away and stood up, moving around the room restlessly. Gabriel watched him pace for a minute or so, picking up stray thoughts for the first time since he'd seen the Winchesters in the library. It was probably a sign of how upset he was at the moment; Dean had surprisingly strong shields and control when it came to those kinds of things. "After we get Joan safe and settled and I've sufficiently kicked Raphael's ass, I'll see about getting Sam's soul out of the cage," Gabriel offered. He'd been considering it even before Joan had gone missing and he'd gone straight into full-blown panic.

"Yeah?" Dean looked more weary and bitter than overjoyed at the news. "And what do you want in return? Pretty sure my soul is below market value at this point."

"You'd be surprised," Gabriel told him. "I don't want your soul. I don't want anything beyond the unparalleled happiness it will give me to stop seeing that Sam action figure walk around like he's the real thing. Besides, I like Sam. He doesn't deserve eternity locked up with Michael and Lucifer. I'm not sure even those two deserve it."

Castiel reappeared in the room with his usual flurry of disturbed air, ending the conversation abruptly. Gabriel needed to work with him on showmanship. "How was Jerusalem?"

"Dry and hot." Castiel set the jug of holy oil down on the table. "Has Sam returned from his mission?"

"You beat him back," Dean told him. "But probably only barely. He should be back any second."

The Diet Coke version of Sam showed up a couple of minutes later carrying a couple of plastic bags full of supplies. They probably wouldn't have much time to get things together when they got back home, so Sam had gone for the non-essentials that would become essential: spray paint, salt, gunpowder, food, water. Gabriel wanted them to dig into some defensible point for the foreseeable future once they had Joan.

Once they were all together, Gabriel pulled his sword from its hiding place and began checking it over. It didn't technically need it, since the swords never needed cleaned and would never rust, but he hadn't used it since the failed battle with Lucifer and wanted the reassurance. "So, basic plan: I'll pop in and distract the idiot once I've scouted the place out. You two lay a few traps, wait for a good opportunity and grab Joan and head for the hills. Lock her down with every kind of protection you can get. Castiel covers that retreat and then comes back to the fight." Gabriel looked up from his examination of the sword in his hand to see skeptical expressions on Winchester faces. "What? Mike and Lucy aren't the only ones who know how to fight." Dean raised his eyebrows and gestured for him to get on with it, and the archangel rolled his eyes and did so. "Wherever he's stashed Joan, anybody who wanders by is going to see guys working on the sewer lines, so don't worry about being sneaky."

"Get in, get out, get gone," the Sam-thing said, and Gabriel grimaced at the idea of agreeing with him but nodded.

"Don't get killed, don't get her killed, don't get me killed. And last but not least, can we all try not to kill any of my brothers who happen to show up?" There was a flinch from Castiel. "Raphael is the only archangel left in Heaven. It's habit and tradition that has most of them following the jackass." He tucked the sword away. "Grab your dicks, boys. I'm taking us home."

Gabriel slipped through the tapestry of the multiverse and into the reality that had become home. Castiel was next to him, making sure that the Winchesters made it through unscathed. That was another one of those things he needed to work on with Castiel in his copious amounts of free time. He was willing to bet the other angel hadn't spent much time moving through the multiverse.

Once everyone was accounted for, the archangel closed his eyes and concentrated on Joan. He started with her enthusiasm for her classes, her strong sense of right and wrong, and the way she tried to help people whenever she could. Next he added a few more details: her sorrow when she'd heard about her friend Lucy, the way that she inhaled a good cup of coffee, her frequent (loud) discussions with Edmund Rivers, and a hundred tiny details that he had noticed while watching over her.

With that complete, all he had to do was concentrate until the connection was made. When her oddly calm emotions increased in strength, Gabriel smiled. "Gotcha."

He was gone in that instant, Castiel following with the humans in his wake, and standing right outside the building in question by the time they caught up.

They were smack-dab in the middle of a ghost town, which made things a little easier. Raphael had apparently fallen victim to a fit of irony and set up shop inside a weather-beaten church with a half-missing roof. The place was quiet in a way that made Gabriel's borrowed skin itch, the silence sinking deep into the earth. Other than the pulse of his brother's grace inside the building and the warm steady light of Joan's soul, nothing else remained living, not even plant life. The ground here was poisoned and he wondered how Raphael could stand to be here for as long as he had.

He hadn't told Dean everything about this whole situation. Hell, he hadn't even told the guy ten percent of what this all meant. Joan was opaque to psychics and angels, a little self-defense measure that Father had put into place to protect his chosen ones. The only way to get through the security wall was a time-consuming period of connection. Gabriel had strung his out over several days, spending hours of uninterrupted time with the girl while they studied or hung out or went to class when they first met. Raphael would be trying for a more concentrated approach, which lacked finesse and would probably add a degree of difficulty in cracking through her mind. The only real shortcut would be to kill her, but his brother would have to be absolutely certain that Father was dead before he'd ever risk such a thing.

Once the traps for a pursuing archangel were set (Gabriel made sure to double-check their location, unwilling to risk the humiliation of being trapped again), Zombie Sam took up a position next to the door. Somewhere along the way the two of them had decided that Dean would take the lead in approaching Joan, which Gabriel approved. Despite Dean's history and reputation, he trusted the older brother not to make the mistake of putting the moves on the girl.

"I'll be back in just a sec, just going to pop in and find out what's going on in there." Gabriel slipped around the atoms that made up the structure of the old church, moving just slightly out of phase with time. It wouldn't fool Raphael for long, but he just wanted a quick peek before he busted in like Superman to save the day.

His 0.3 second peek turned into something a little longer when he was brought to a screeching halt. Raphael was sitting in a pew with his head bowed. Joan was sitting next to him, a sympathetic expression on her face that Gabriel remembered from when her friend Grace's mother was in the hospital. She had one small hand resting on the archangel's shoulder, the effect made somewhat comical by the sheer size of Raphael's new vessel.

"It's going to be ok," she said, her voice soothing. "Knowing him, he's already forgiven you for everything. Dads do that kind of thing."

"But if He was alive all this time, why did he abandon us?"

She made a soft sound of disagreement. "God didn't abandon you. You were strong enough to stand on your own. But you need to figure out what you're supposed to be doing, what He wants you to do. Not just what someone else tells you should be done."

"It just hurt so much," Raphael said. A less charitable person would have called it whining, but since Raphael's current vessel weighed in at around 270 and stood around 6'6" Gabriel doubted that anyone would have made that claim to his face. "I just wanted it to end."

"But that wasn't the way," Joan said, her voice a little more stern now. "You started something that wasn't supposed to happen, something you knew He wouldn't like. Actions have consequences." She leaned over and gave him an awkward hug. "You should probably apologize."

Gabriel chose that moment to step in. There was a good possibility that his brother would take her words the wrong way and he definitely wanted this progress to be kept. Besides, that hug was just kind of wrong and he didn't want to see anything like that again. He moved back into the stream of time with a thought.

To Joan he probably simply appeared, leaning back against the aging pulpit, and she started in surprise when she saw him. Raphael looked up at him with that unbelievably solemn face. He'd always taken himself a little too seriously. "Gabriel," he intoned, and the archangel in question refrained from rolling his eyes.

"She's right, you know," he said. "Father's a little upset with all of us right now."

"I can understand why He would be upset with _you_," Raphael said stiffly. "You've spent the last two thousand years wallowing around with the pagans. Are you finally ready to come home?"

"Nope." Gabriel remained where he was, despite the temptation to move. He hated staying still like this, but Raphael looked and sounded like he was at the end of his rope. One false move might set off a reaction that neither one of them really wanted. "If I go back now, I'm going to be right back where I started. You want me on your side. Castiel wants me to fight on his. And if you'll remember, little brother, that was exactly why I left Heaven in the first place."

"You chose to fight for Michael. We all believed you to be dead."

"I was dead. Father brought me back, just like he brought back Castiel. And for the record, I didn't fight for Michael. If that ass had been there, I'd probably have fought him too. I was fighting for the humans." Raphael made a dismissive noise, which Gabriel personally thought was a little gutsy in that kind of proximity to Joan. "Father gave them the planet, whether you like it or not."

"You mean you sided with the Winchesters," Raphael said shrewdly.

Gabriel shrugged. It was true enough, to a certain degree. "They grow on you. Like a tree fungus or an embarrassing skin condition."

"An apt comparison." Raphael's borrowed face mirrored his true one buried underneath, and Gabriel could tell that neither one was amused.

"You're not still sore about Dean trapping you in a circle of holy fire, are you? Come on, it happens to the best of us."

"You mean they trapped you as well."

"I have no idea what's going on," Joan interrupted, rolling her eyes and standing up. She'd been following the conversation like she was watching a tennis match, clearly lost without the overruling context. "And I'm really starting to get hungry. Is there any way we can wrap this up so I can get something to eat?" She thought about it for a second and added, "And coffee and a shower, please."

Gabriel couldn't help the chuckle that escaped. This whole mess was so very like her from start to finish. "Sure, kiddo. I think we're almost done."

There was a huff of exasperation. "Good. You have a lot of explaining to do, buddy. Your cover is officially blown."

He glanced at Raphael, who shrugged the shoulders of his true form. The vessel remained impressively stoic. "I assumed she knew."

"Well, I do now. Now hug and make up so we can get going." She folded her arms across her chest, one foot tapping slightly on the floor.

Raphael looked at Gabriel for a long moment. "I am not hugging you."

"Likewise," Gabriel told him. "Does this mean you're going to back off on the civil war? I'd be more likely to come home every once in a while if it wasn't a pitched battle every single time." He missed home. Earth and the humans were great, but sometimes the desire for the warmth and light of Heaven and the constant presence of his brothers was almost painful. If Joan's little talk to Raphael got the whole thing settled, he would feel welcome there again.

"She has given me much to think about. I will seek revelation and see what comes." He was gone with an overly dramatic fluttering of wings, but Gabriel wasn't exactly someone who could throw stones about that particular tendency and he let it slide.

Joan turned to him with a questioning look on her face. "Is he always like that?"

"Pretty much. And aside from me, Raphael is the most laid-back of all the archangels. Trust me, you don't want to try anything like this with Michael." He took a closer look at Joan. "Are you all right?" Raphael would have wanted her whole, but it had been a very long time since he'd willingly mingled with humans and he wasn't as aware of how very fragile they could be.

She shrugged. "Hungry. Tired. Cold. I want a shower in the worst way, but I want food and coffee more. And you are not getting out of your explanation."

"Duly noted. I just need to pick up a few people I had waiting outside."

"The Archangel Gabriel needs backup?"

"When my brothers fight, there tends to be a lot of destruction. I wasn't sure what kind of mood Raph was in, but if it came down to a fight I wanted you out of harms way." He snapped his fingers and Team Moron dropped into the room.

They handled the change well, which was to be expected. Gabriel had spent enough time over the years watching the Winchesters that he knew they tended to land on their feet. Castiel, of course, simply studied his new surroundings (now Raphael-free!) with the kind of irritating calm that made Gabriel consider dropping him with the Leverage crew for a time. A week spent with Parker would do wonders for that stick up his baby brother's ass.

"Why does your backup include that creepy guy from the coffee shop?" Joan asked. She'd taken an instinctive step away from the three new occupants and toward Gabriel.

"Yeah, that's on my list of things to take care of," he muttered. "The guy with the coat is Castiel, the tall replicant is Sam, and the one who looks balanced in comparison to the other two is Dean."

"Yeah, nice to meet all of you. Can we go get pizza now?"

One snap of his fingers sent the Winchesters back to their motel room. Castiel inclined his head and disappeared with the unspoken promise that they would be speaking later. Gabriel wasn't quite sure if he was looking forward to it or dreading it.

That left Joan and Gabriel alone in the decrepit building. "You want to head back to your room?"

She winced and made a face, still a little shaky but recovering very quickly. "I go back there right now and that paper will be staring me in the face."

"My place it is."

Gabriel didn't have an apartment of his own, exactly. That would have been completely unnecessary for a being who didn't sleep, didn't need to eat, didn't require clothing and who could rearrange time and space. With a thought he opened a fold in space and built a comfortable facsimile of an apartment. He relocated a deep-dish pizza with pretty much everything from a place in downtown Chicago and a latte from an area Starbucks. He thought about it for a second and added a bathroom to his construction, grabbing a pair of loose, comfortable pants and a sweatshirt from Joan's closet. He used the last half-second to move the girl from Montana to Chicago and his little shelter.

It took her a few seconds to adjust to the change in location, and she frowned when she caught sight of the neat pile of soft cotton. "It's a little creepy that you can do that," she told him, grabbing the clothing and hurrying into the bathroom. "Don't eat my pizza," she called from behind the door, just as the water started running.

Gabriel took a moment to stretch his wings out and settle his mind. Dealing with his brothers was always way too stressful. He would have tried sending Raphael on a vacation to Grand Cayman Island centuries ago, but that stick in the mud would probably just stand on the beach with his shoes on and angst over how Father loved the humans more. The story got old after a while. Sighing, he rearranged his vessel until it once again looked like Gabriel Parker, mild-mannered law student. Joan would probably deal with Gabriel Parker better than Loki.

What little nervousness she'd show before her shower was gone when she got out. She was surprisingly calm as she curled up on the comfortable couch that Gabriel had borrowed, pizza and coffee in hand. That particular dentist had it coming, to his mind, and deserved the rickety curb-side reject Gabriel had left in its place. "So, you're the archangel Gabriel," she said, taking a huge bite of pizza.

"The one and only."

"And God made you my babysitter."

"No one makes an archangel do anything they don't want to do. Father asked, I agreed. And I'm more bodyguard than babysitter, with a side order of companion."

"And you also pretended to be a pagan god."

"I hated watching my brothers fight," Gabriel said. "All anyone wanted to do anymore was plan on killing Lucifer. So I left. Hung out with pagans, who were at least expected to be dysfunctional. Nobody blinked over there when one family member wanted to kill another one."

"Raphael thought you were dead."

"That's because I was. God brought me back."

She shivered and set aside her pizza, clutching the coffee cup closer. "How did you die?"

Shit. He really, really didn't want to get into this. He'd been frantically trying to repress those memories since about 30 seconds after he was resurrected. "Lucifer killed me."

"So Raphael was right? The Devil was really out trying to end the world?"

"He tried. The Winchesters stopped him, believe it or not. That's part of the reason why Sam is all Dexter Morgan now; his soul is still trapped with Michael and Lucifer."

Joan looked at him, curious and slightly scheming. "Is there something you can do about that?"

"I'm planning on it. I just wanted to make sure you were settled before I went down and faced my brothers."

"I'm probably going to fall asleep on this couch," she admitted. She looked at him with worry in her eyes. "Are you going to be all right? You're seriously talking about going to Hell."

"Sure. Getting in is easy. The worst part of it all will probably be having to be around my brothers while they argue. I'll be back out before you know and then I'll tell you all about the time I put a pair of Tribbles in the air ducts at Harvard."

"So you're still playing tricks on people?"

"Just little ones, and only to people who are way too uptight." He wasn't telling her about Ryan Beck or Justin Anton, the asshole who'd been planning on drugging and raping her. "I once made a frat boy slow-dance with an alien."

She giggled, an edge of hysteria to it that was quickly controlled. "What else?"

He searched his mind for something that she would find funny and not repulsive or disturbing. "I changed a tiger's stripes into spots and left him where a zoologist would find it. I changed them back just as he was announcing his great discovery."

"Why did you do that?" There was a yawn and Gabriel pulled a blanket from someplace convenient and draped it over her. The White House would never miss it.

"Guy had this habit of stealing other people's work." He'd also created carnivorous bunnies with sharp, pointy teeth that were waiting for the douchebag in his office when the failed press conference had ended in complete and total humiliation, but that was another story that Joan would never hear.

"So most of what you do is kind of avenging angel stuff?"

"That's one way to look at it," Gabriel agreed readily. Mostly it was about him getting bored and wanting to play. Pompous jerks were much more fun to mess with than the other side of the fence.

Joan was fading fast, the stress of the last twenty-four hours coming down like a heavy stage curtain. "You'll make sure nothing happens while I'm asleep?"

"You can count on it." He was going to call in Castiel as a bedside guardian once she was deeply asleep, but Castiel could handle anything up to and including Lucifer popping up in his little safe place. He would feel it through the bond if she had any nightmares or woke up suddenly.

There was a faint smile before her eyes slid closed. Gabriel waited for a few minutes until she was in a little more deeply before summoning Castiel.

His younger brother showed up with his usual sudden fluttering of wings. "Gabriel."

"She's asleep," he said. "Can you watch over her for a few hours?"

"Where are you going?"

"To Hell," he said, voice chipper. "I think its about time someone got Sam Winchester out of that cage."

"Should you be doing anything that might damage the cage? If Lucifer is able to free himself from the cage again -,"

"The cage will hold Michael and Lucifer. That's not a problem; it was designed to hold archangels up until the door gets opened. It's not meant for human souls. They're a little more flexible. I should be able to tease Sam's soul out of there without any problem."

"And if there is a problem?"

"I'll start screaming for you, Castiel. I won't be shy about it."

xxx

Hell wasn't especially hard to get into for an archangel. It was incredibly unpleasant, of course, but since it was Hell that was to be expected. Technically speaking, for Gabriel walking into Hell was pretty much the same as flying to Albuquerque or moving through the tapestry with added sulfur and brimstone. Getting back out with his prize would probably prove to be a little more difficult, but he was ready for a challenge. Most of the beings who roamed free in the Pit weren't willing to confront an archangel on a mission, but one with a potential liability might be a little too tempting for the demon crowd.

He reached the cage with little confrontation, which disappointed him on one level. The _wrongness_ of Hell made him itch. It clashed with everything that Heaven stood for at its purest and most basic, shaped by Lucifer to twist the humans that Father loved into something grotesque. Just being here made Gabriel want to lay waste to it all.

There was no way of staying out of sight here like there was on Earth. Gabriel went to the edges of the cage without hesitation, taking in everything. He could hear Michael and Lucifer arguing, the same argument he'd been having since before Lucifer got locked up. 'Father loved you best, Father loved the humans best, you're a monster, you're just Daddy's little soldier, blah blah blah.' Gabriel had seen more intelligent discussions that one time he hung around the elementary school waiting for the appropriate moment to have the cast of Sesame Street crush him to death.

Sam Winchester's soul was huddled in the corner away from the two bickering archangels. There was surprisingly little damage done to it. Michael and Lucifer were still too busy fighting with each other to turn on the other occupant of the cage. Angels were immortal and tended to take the long view of things, after all, and two hundred years of an argument wasn't really all that unusual. Nothing anyone else wanted to hear, of course, but pretty typical fare as far as his brothers went.

Gabriel approached the soul with caution. He had no desire to get caught up in this argument between his brothers. He'd come back again sometime and see if their time in God's time-out box had done either one of them any good, but right now he was here for Sam Winchester. "Sam?"

There was no sign of movement from the soul, which had stayed with something approximating its human form. Gabriel sighed and reached out metaphysical fingers, reaching the edges of the soul that slipped through the containment. "Sam, buddy, amigo, we really need to get going. I've got places to be."

Sam had twitched when Gabriel came in contact with the soul and then curled up to a tighter ball. "Not real," he murmured, pulling away from the walls.

"Sam! We do not have time for this right now. Get over here so I can get you out or I will trap you in that freaking Japanese game show for a year. I am not kidding around here, Sam. Do you want to stay in here with my idiot brothers?"

"No," Sam said. He didn't move closer to the wall and didn't say anything further.

It was at this stage that his brothers broke off their bickering and turned in his direction. Gabriel cursed under his breath. This was a complication he didn't want. "Hey, guys. Having fun?"

"Gabriel," Michael said angrily. "What are you doing here? Still rolling around with the pagan filth?"

"Not recently, thanks for asking. You two working things out down here? Need a therapist to help with your issues?"

"That won't be necessary," Lucifer said. "You look well, considering the last time we saw each other."

"You mean when you stabbed me in the heart? Yeah, Dad took care of that. You two aren't looking that great."

"What do you expect?" Michael glared at Lucifer. "I'm forced to be close to this monster and abomination who housed him. It's beneath me."

"I would expect no less from Father's perfect little soldier. Why would you ever do something to help the little monkeys? It's not like you care about them."

"You don't actually hate them either. You just hate that Father likes them."

Gabriel turned back to the soul shivering away from the overwhelming brightness of the two archangels. Those two had never seen anyone other than each other. It was probably the only reason that Sam's soul was intact. Sam was beneath Michael's notice and Lucifer couldn't see anyone but Michael when the two of them were together.

"Sam, aren't you bored with this yet?" Gabriel tried his best to look pleading. "There's an Autobot wandering around topside that looks like you, and we need to get you in there. Dean's going nuts."

"He promised he was going to Lisa."

That was interesting information. Gabriel had been wondering where Dean had gone for that missing year. "Well he's back in the game now. So let's get you back to where you belong, huh? No one deserves these two for eternity."

Sam finally looked up at Gabriel and nodded. That was all the agreement that Gabriel needed.

It wasn't that hard to pull Sam's soul out of the cage. The hard part was keeping Michael and Lucifer distracted so that they wouldn't grab Sam to keep him from leaving. Lucifer tended to be especially petty about things like that. Unfortunately, he needed Sam's cooperation because he wasn't able to reach all the way into the cage, just brush the edges, and that meant that Sam was aware of everything that was happening. Within the cage he was actually somewhat insulated from the effects of Hell by the burning light of two archangels. But as soon as Gabriel started prying him loose from his prison, Hell started its corrosion of the mostly pure soul.

Once it was free of the cage, he urged it into a dreamless sleep and tucked it in close to his presence, where it would be sheltered. After one last check to make sure that no fragment of Sam's soul remained behind (nothing left but two archangels arguing like an old married couple), Gabriel hurried to leave Hell behind.

Gabriel checked on Joan and Castiel, relieved to find his charge still sleeping peacefully and Castiel still standing guard in Gabriel's little carved-out niche of security. There would undoubtedly be nightmares in her near future; despite Joan's flippant attitude afterwards she'd been terrified by the abduction and her time with the least subtle of Gabriel's brothers. He was just hoping to postpone the matter until after this whole thing with the Winchesters was cleared up.

While he was there he pulled a large Tupperware container from a nearby house and made it soul-tight before sealing Sam inside. Souls tended to disperse on Earth, heading toward their eventual destination if they weren't properly contained. Castiel watched the process with interest, commenting that he'd never seen this done before.

"It doesn't happen very often on our end of things," Gabriel told him, making sure the lid was tight. Even though he'd promised Raphael that he would come home soon, he didn't want it to make that little day trip quite yet, especially to track down Sam Winchester's soul yet again. "Demons do it sometimes when they need the energy to power a ritual, but returning a soul from Heaven isn't that difficult for angels. I've only needed to do this twice before this, for a couple of guys that Hell really wanted that we were planning on bringing back." He shook the container lightly. "Back then I just shoved them into clay pots, though."

"His soul seems intact," Castiel said, studying it through the translucent plastic. "I would have expected Lucifer to cause further damage."

"Not with Michael around to distract him." Gabriel did one last check on Joan. "I'm going to put this where it belongs. Don't watch any porn around her, please. I'm pretty sure she's had enough trauma from angels for the past few days."

Castiel nodded stiffly and Gabriel held back a sigh. Dean had been corrupting his baby brother again. Didn't the man know that it was Gabriel's job to do that?

The Winchesters were still in their dump of a motel, though Sam Lite looked like he was being kept there forcibly. Dean was sharpening knives and churning over some thought or another; his mind was surprisingly a little too complex to get the deeper thoughts and most of the time Gabriel had to settle with surface impressions and his similarities to Michael, which had occasionally gotten the archangel into trouble. "I come bearing gifts," he said. "Well, _a_ gift, technically, but its one you really want."

There was a long moment of overwhelming, awkward silence. "What?"

"Megatron over there still doesn't want it back," Dean ground out.

"OK, you do realize that you're basically a pile of rotting meat sooner rather than later?"

"I'd rather be dead than a gibbering nutcase," the bad remake said, voice irritated.

"Where did you morons get this idea that I'd do such a half-assed job of putting Sam's soul back together?"

"Cas said that Michael and Lucifer were using him like a cat toy."

"Yeah, well Castiel doesn't know Michael and Lucifer like I do. They're still too busy having that same stupid argument they've been having for centuries to torture your brothers' soul, idiot. And even if they had been messing with Sam, I would never consider putting a damaged soul back into its meatsuit without healing it first. Hello, archangel Gabriel here? I would never have made the offer if I thought Sam couldn't take it." He snapped his fingers and a sturdy straight-back chair appeared. "You, sit. I've got places to be that don't involve hanging out with you two clowns. Dean, get a belt for your brother, would you? This is probably going to hurt and it would mildly inconvenience me if you two had to be moved because someone called the cops about all the screaming."

Dean got his brother's shell situated in the chair, mouth pinched in some undefined emotion that Gabriel didn't feel like deciphering. He liked the Winchesters, but right now he just wanted to put Sam's soul back in place and send them on their way. "Hold him down," Gabriel said, opening up the container and picking up the softly glowing soul with one hand.

The entire process didn't take nearly as long as pulling Sam's soul out of Hell in the first place. The body and the soul were meant to be together until the body could no longer function, and Sam's soul slotted into place without a hiccup. "That should do it," Gabriel said. "I'd lay low for a little while until he gets used to it again. Call me if there are any problems."

"Call you how?" Dean asked, hefting the limp body of his brother onto the bed. "What, you want me to pray?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes and held up a cell phone. "Or you could try my cell, dumbass. I put my number in your cell. But do us both a favor and don't call for a while. I've had enough of you two bozos to last a while."

"Thanks, Gabriel," Dean said. There was an honest sincerity there that Gabriel knew was rare for the hunter, and he seemed to be at a rare loss for words.

"Don't mention it. Really. I've got a reputation, after all."

"Not a problem." He looked from Gabriel to his unconscious brother. "By the way, was there any sign of our brother Adam down there?"

"None. You could see if Castiel can spot him in Heaven. Seriously, don't call. I've got shit to do and you two are not on my list." And with that parting shot, Gabriel was gone. He was needed elsewhere, and it was nice to be needed again. Strange that it had taken him so long to figure that out.

Epilogue:

"You spend too much time overthinking it," Gabriel told Castiel. "Father asking you to do something is a good thing. Trust me."

"I might trust you more if you weren't constantly complaining about how difficult it can be to watch over Joan."

"They're not always this difficult," Gabriel protested. "Sometimes they listen to you before they run off and do exactly what they want."

"You are less than comforting."

"What do you want from me? I'm the Messenger, not a therapist. Hey, there we go." The spirit moved past them, following the tiny blond woman that Father had just recruited as one of His Knights. She was due to meet with Joan soon, something Father had planned so that they would both be in the right place at the right time. On this particular occasion, however, the human spirit was the real concern. He'd been the subject of more than a few prayers from the faithful and Castiel had been tasked with retrieving the soul and placing it in a freshly resurrected body. The man was going to be laying some important groundwork for far future battles, and Castiel needed to spend some time watching over him, acting as a guide. It was somewhat similar to his first encounters with Dean, but the younger angel had learned quite a bit since then.

"How should I approach him?"

"I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but be straight with him. He's been lied to most of his life. If we'd all been a little more honest with Sam Winchester, things might have turned out a little differently." Gabriel smiled, a little mischievously. "The time for playing with him will come later. Don't worry, little brother. You can handle Harry Dresden."

Author's Note:

This was a fun one. I had a few different concepts for it, most of them darker than this, but in the end I went with the slightly better-adjusted one. Someday I might write one or two of the other ideas.

The original story I wanted to write was what basically became the epilogue. I wanted to write Gabriel and Harry Dresden snarking at each other, but that level of snark was beyond me. And Joan just kept poking at me, wanting in the story, and Harry was being difficult. Maybe someday I'll write the story with Castiel and Harry Dresden.

And of course, many thanks go to my beta, Patience. She's awesome and despite working overtime and many other real life commitments she plowed through this thing with a fine-toothed comb for me.

Listing of the pranks, in the order which they occur:

Pretending to be Gabriel Parker, law student.

Changing appearance for the couple making out in the study carrel.

Ryan Beck's relocation to the Roman Empire circa 72 AD.

The invented vengeful spirit to throw off Sam and Dean.

Revisiting Ryan Beck

Professor Naughty Pants getting caught.

Relocating coffee

Rearranging the medical texts

Changing the eyeglass prescription of the local politician

Feral hamsters

Burst pipes on a pleasantly sunny day.

Jaguar left abandoned on the beach in the Philippines.

Turning the gun into a water pistol.

Relocating Sam's chair

Hiding the Ark of the Covenant in Grant's tomb.

Relocating Gabriel's chair

Relocating coffee

Altering coffee

Taking them all into the world of 'Sunshine.'

Sugar into salt.

Bad guy being dangled from a roof by Batman.

Castiel was thrown into Twilight.

Stretching time.

Turning the beer non-alcoholic.

Corvette into a Pinto

Rapist in prison show.

Undoing the plastic surgery

Turning cheap silverware into Gabriel's Horn.

Loop of survivor

Castiel being dropped into Leverage.

Folds space to create the apartment

Relocates pizza

Relocates coffee

Relocates clothing from Joan's apartment.

Steals couch

Tribbles in the air ducts at Harvard

Tiger's stripes changing into spots

Stealing blanket from White House

Carnivorous bunnies

Sam's soul in a Tupperware container


End file.
